Home ›› 01 Aug 2021 ›› Editorial
A couple of years back Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) called on countries to address food and agriculture in their climate action plans and invest more in rural development. According to the UN, climate is changing. Food and agriculture must too. It said in its website: “The world’s poorest are being hit hardest by climate change. If we strengthen the resilience of smallholder farmers, we can guarantee food security for the planet’s growing global population and also reduce emissions.”
This may be recalled that at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015, 193 countries pledged to end hunger in the next 15 years. That means by the year 2030, hunger should become history in the world. But standing in 2021, do we see any indication that hunger is about to be a thing of the past in just another nine years? This writer does not think so.
Let us remind ourselves once again. The UN global goal for achieving Zero Hunger is in 2030 – but critics believe that this cannot be reached without addressing climate change. One of the biggest issues related to climate change is food security. The world’s poorest - many of whom are farmers, fishers and pastoralists - are being hit hardest by higher temperatures and an increasing frequency in weather-related disasters.
FAO writes that at the same time, the global population is growing steadily and is expected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050. To meet such a heavy demand, agriculture and food systems will need to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change and become more resilient, productive and sustainable. This is the only way that we can ensure the wellbeing of ecosystems and rural populations and reduce emissions.
This means growing food in a sustainable way through adopting practices that produce more with less in the same area of land and use natural resources wisely. It also means reducing food losses before the final product or retail stage through a number of initiatives including better harvesting, storage, packing, transport, infrastructure, market mechanisms, as well as institutional and legal frameworks.
Giving due emphasis on climate, the global message for World Food Day 2016 was “Climate is changing. Food and agriculture must too.”
Let us take a look at the Bangladesh scene.
It is common knowledge now that our agricultural land is depleting by 1per cent every year against the frightening increase of population by 2per cent per annum. Under the circumstances, it is indeed a daunting challenge for the Bangladesh government to ensure sufficient crop production to feed nearly 16 crore mouths every day. According to a study done in 2014, Bangladesh’s 40 million people have remained food insecure although the country has achieved food sufficiency and better accessibility to food. In its Strategic Review of Food Security and Nutrition in Bangladesh, FAO said a daunting number of people still remain out of food security. In fact, one-quarter of the population, that is 40 million people, was estimated to be food insecure in 2014. The study report however said that Bangladesh was a food deficit country in the 1970s but has come out of that cycle. Now, though population has more than doubled, food production has kept pace with population growth in the last three decades. That is definitely good news for all concerned.
Experts say that Bangladesh has attained food self-sufficiency at least in terms of calorie availability–per capita calorie intake in 2010 was 2,318 kilocalories per day, up from the minimum requirement of 2,122 kilocalories per day. They opine that people’s access to food has improved and along with it the state of nutrition, which was a major concern, has improved too.
But undernutrition still remains a major challenge. According to a joint study conducted by the government of Bangladesh and the United States Agency for International Development, undernutrition costs Bangladesh more than $1 billion in lost productivity every year, and even more in health costs. Therefore, this is a vital area that will need more attention than what it is getting now.
To ensure better farming and increased per acre yield of crops, experts laid emphasis on mechanization of agriculture, proper and balanced use of fertilizer, supply of quality seeds, timely irrigation and installing an efficient marketing system. In this regard the government is offering a 25per cent subsidy on farm machinery. It has been seen that a farmer can use a power tiller or tractor for many purposes like rice farming, carrying goods, bricks or humans etc., and earn extra money.
Bangladesh food experts urge entrepreneurs to come forward and help in R&D in agriculture. They also inform us that our scientists are doing research work on temperature tolerant, stress tolerant and saline tolerant wheat. As a result, we are going for wheat cultivation in Faridpur, Shariatpur, Madaripur, Barguna and some other districts. We introduced maize (Bhutta) cultivation after the floods of 1988, and went into production in 1999-2000.
The agricultural bank is giving a loan at 4 per cent interest to farmers to grow spices, onions, garlic, turmeric, ginger etc.
It appears in plain sight that if the government remains steadfast in implementing the agriculture roadmap in time, no one in Bangladesh will remain hungry for a day. It also has to address climate change issues jointly with global partners.
The writer is a researcher on environmental issues
